Jocketty out as Cards GM

[bernie132000]

I think some of heads of the stat geeks here would simply pop and splatter blood, brains, bone, and chunks of hair everywhere if LaRussa came here

I thought LaRussa was stat minded. He actually looks at how each hitter has faced that days pitcher and uses them accordingly. Now some sabermetricians have proven that to be false, which I disagree with. I agree with LaRussa here, that sometimes a hitter can just own a pitcher, and a pitcher can own a hitter. A hitter may pick up a release point better, or the pitchers repitoire may suit a hitter. I like Trembley, but love LaRussa. No way he comes here though, I don't think.

[Migrant Redbird]

I thought LaRussa was stat minded. He actually looks at how each hitter has faced that days pitcher and uses them accordingly.

Actually, Dave Duncan keeps voluminous records on every opposing hitter, charting the location of every pitch to them and the outcome -- where the ball gets hit, how hard, and whether it's fielded for an out. La Russa apparently consults those charts on the hitters during the game to guide his managerial moves. My own observations suggest that La Russa gets so wrapped up in consulting his charts that he loses touch with the current game situation.

An example would be during game 3 of the 2000 NLDS, when Garrett Stephenson had obviously hurt himself making a pitch (the announcers were discussing it and showing the replay) and, when it appeared that Stephenson was going to attempt to continue (Garrett had guts), Will Clark went over and told Stephenson to take himself out of the game before he hurt himself further or hurt the team. La Russa eventually did make it out of the dugout to take Stephenson out, but there was never any explanation of why he took so amazingly long to leave the dugout. My suspicion is that he and Duncan had their noses buried in the charts and didn't even see Stephenson's delivery, and that some of the other players in the dugout had to explain to La Russa what had happened, before he decided to go out to the mound.

I suppose that La Russa could have been consulting with Dave Duncan about which reliever to bring in, but the manager's first action should have been to go to the mound to find out what was wrong with his pitcher. Most managers would have been running out to the mound after their pitcher made such an obviously painful throw. In a situation like that, the manager, pitching coach, and trainer should all be out there listening to what their pitcher has to say. If it turns out that the pitcher is injured, then they call the umpire over and explain. Once that's done, the manager and pitching coach can decide who will be coming in, since the reliever has all the time he needs to warm up.

I never did know who told the media about Will Clark ordering Stephenson to take himself out of the game, but I never did read anything about La Russa's reaction. My belief is that Will was an annoyance in the dugout with all his chatter and that La Russa resented Will usurping his manager's authority by telling his pitcher what to do. I believe the friction between Clark and La Russa was one of the reasons that Will announced his retirement that winter. Will knew that McGwire's knee problems meant the Cardinals would need either Will or another 1st baseman to take a substantial number of McGwire's starts. According to Syd Thrift, the idea for the Clark/Leon trade came from Will himself, because Will didn't relish the idea of riding the Orioles bench during the youth movement after the breakup of the O's team that summer. Thrift hadn't attempted to move Clark along with the other veterans like Surhoff and Bordick, but Will knew the Cardinals needed a fill-in for McGwire and relished the opportunity for getting into the post season. Since the Cards fell short in the 2000 NLCS, Clark surely would have liked another opportunity to get back to the World Series, but wasn't willing to go into a situation where the manager didn't want him.

If the Cardinals didn't play in such a "soft" media market (the ownership of the club and the St. Louis Post Dispatch is interlocked and La Russa has been know to retaliate against reporters who offend him), the media would probably have made a big deal about La Russa's delay in going to the mound and Clark's usurpation of his manager's job. That kind of speculation is rare in St. Louis, which perhaps explains why the Jocketty dismissal caught so many of us by surprise. The warning signs were there and reporters are now writing about how the schism within the Cardinals front office has visibly been there for a year or two, but they were reluctant to write about it before the Jocketty firing.

The reason which Clark gave for retiring was that he was ready to hang up his spikes and spend more time hunting, but the Cardinals front office under Jocketty has a reputation of simply ignoring players who are about to become free agents that they don't want to bring back. (E.g., Steve Kline, Matt Morris, Mike Matheny, and a couple of others.) Often, those are players who have visibly annoyed La Russa or have been visible as clubhouse leaders. One of the reasons La Russa liked McGwire was because he "led by example" rather than by exhorting his team mates to play better. Players who want to take vocal leadership roles in St. Louis often seem to have difficulties getting along with La Russa, e.g. Ozzie Smith, Brian Jordan, Ron Gant, and Will Clark. Clark may have just been tired from dealing with all the injuries and wanted to go out on a high note (He hit 12 42 22 24 .345/.426/.655/1.081 with 12 home runs and 42 RBIs in just 197 plate appearances with the Cards down the stretch), but I'm convinced that he also had a strained relationship with La Russa.

Now some sabermetricians have proven that to be false, which I disagree with.

I don't believe that sabermetricians have proven any such thing. At best, they've been unable to find any data which demonstrates that it's a reliable predictor of future performance (kind of like "clutch" hitting). Actually proving that it's false is much more difficult.

I agree with LaRussa here, that sometimes a hitter can just own a pitcher, and a pitcher can own a hitter. A hitter may pick up a release point better, or the pitchers repitoire may suit a hitter.

I also believe that's possible, even likely, but the problem is that you're dealing with really small sample sizes and the statistics don't prove anything in these cases. Now if you observe that a particular hitter has never been able to handle a certain type of pitch in a certain location and you have a pitcher who is particularly skillful in throwing that type of a pitch, it's logical to bring in that pitcher to face that particular hitter in a particular situation, regardless of what's happened in the past between those two players. But you shouldn't base that decision on just a handful of at bats -- what I like to refer to as "micro stats".

However, with Dave Duncan's records, La Russa has a lot more information than what the statistics provide us. A hitter might have an OPS of 2.000 against a certain pitcher in only a half dozen at bats, but Duncan's charts might show that those 4 hits include a cheap fly ball that just made it into the Crawford boxes; a bloop broken bat single which just cleared the 2nd baseman's glove on a pitch that fooled the hitter completely; and a couple of "swinging bunts" that were fluke hits. The problem which I see is that trying to analyze that data during a game distracts a manager from the flow of the game. It's something which the manager should know from studying the charts prior to the game and he might need to consult a "crib sheet", but he shouldn't have his nose in the charts while the game is under way.

I like Trembley, but love LaRussa. No way he comes here though, I don't think.

I hate the way La Russa seems to develop poisonous relationships with all too many of his players and I like what I've read about Trembley's handling of his minor league players, but that doesn't prove that Trembley is a better manager than La Russa is. Neither does La Russa's ranking among managers as having the 3rd most wins (and 3rd most losses) mean that he's a superior manager. By the way, Tony is 148 losses out of 2nd place and nearly 400 wins behind McGraw for 2nd place in that category. Guess which he'd get to with the O's before he got fired?

[Migrant Redbird]

I believe that Walt will land on his feet. He appears to be one of the nicest people in the business, and I think he's very well regarded around baseball.

Some corroboration:

Walt says Good-bye at Shannons

Walt's get together was held at Mike Shannons and wanted an informal setting. He said that he was beat and needed a deep breathe. Has a couple of other offers. TLR was completely off guard by the news and doesn't know what Tony will do. Would like to stay in STL for the year because he has kids, son heading into his senior year and daughter is at SLU. Got teary....

Word is Braves have offered him an advisory role like Leyland's role before becoming the Tigers manager. Additionally, all teams involved in the playoffs have contacted him.

It sounds like Jocketty might want to take at least a year off from being a general manager and might take some kind of a consulting job -- which is what Leyland did for Jocketty and the Cardinals after stepping down from managing the Rockies -- so that he can keep his family home in St. Louis until his son graduates from high school. I've been there -- spent the winter of 1990-91 as a batchelor in Maryland so that my oldest could finish her senior year of high school in Colorado Springs and another year that way in 1993-1994 so that my two younger kids didn't need to switch schools in the middle of the school year.

[Boy Howdy]

I think some of heads of the stat geeks here would simply pop and splatter blood, brains, bone, and chunks of hair everywhere if LaRussa came here

My mother never forgave LaRussa for Britt Burns' brushback pitches during the 1983 ALCS, or White Sox shortstop Scott Fletcher stepping on Eddie Murray's hand.